Empowering Rural Electric Infrastructure Resilience

A team selected for strategic-plan seed funding during the spring 2024 Community Vitality Research and Innovation Roundtable recently received a three-year $1.5 million award from the National Science Foundation. Pictured, from left to right, are Behrouz Shafei, PI Alice Alipour, Samuel Mindes, William Gallus, and Ian Dobson. Photo by Christopher Gannon.

Transdisciplinary Iowa State Team Receives NSF Award to Explore How to Improve the Resilience of Rural Electric Power Infrastructure

For rural electric utilities with limited resources, the challenge of delivering consistent, unabated power to all sectors of the communities they serve has never been greater. Changes in climate are increasing extreme weather events that can cause damage to electric power utilities and result in prolonged outages that can have serious social and economic consequences.

A transdisciplinary team from Iowa State University is tackling this challenge head-on with the support of a three-year $1.5 million award that the National Science Foundation (NSF) announced September 23, 2024. The project, entitled “Empowering Resilience: Innovations in Rural Electric Network Disaster Preparedness and Response” is one of 14 large-scale projects NSF is supporting through the agency’s Responsible Design, Development and Deployment of Technologies (ReDDDoT) program. The team is led by principal investigator (PI) Alice Alipour, associate professor, and Thomas M. Murray Family Faculty Fellow, of Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering.

The NSF ReDDDoT program is a collaboration with philanthropic partners crosses all disciplines of science and engineering. The program seeks to ensure that ethical, legal, community, and societal considerations are embedded in the lifecycle of technology’s creation and use. The program supports research, implementation and education projects involving multi-sector teams that focus on the responsible design, development or deployment of technologies.

“NSF is committed to creating mutually beneficial research collaborations among diverse partners who contribute their expertise and resources to accelerating technology innovation that positively addresses pressing national, societal and geostrategic challenges,” said Erwin Gianchandani, assistant director for Technology, Innovation and Partnerships (TIP). “Through a robust public-private partnership with philanthropies, NSF’s investment in ReDDDoT aims to ensure that TIP advances the design, development and deployment of new technologies responsibly.”

The overarching goal of the Iowa State project is to design, develop, and deploy a novel digital infrastructure that will enable utilities in rural communities to more effectively plan for changing climate, minimize the impact of natural disasters, and recover from them as quickly as possible.

“Weather-related disasters present an array of challenges that involve engineering, meteorology, socioeconomic, governance and more, requiring a collaborative approach that draws on the expertise and perspectives of diverse disciplines and sectors,” Alipour said. “Harnessing the collective wisdom and capabilities of experts from academia, government, industry, and the community will provide a holistic understanding of risks, devise robust assessment methodologies, and enable effective mitigation and resilience-building strategies.”

Alipour’s transdisciplinary team includes:
• Behrouz Shafei; associate professor and Cerwick Faculty Fellow, Civil, Construction and Environmental Engineering (Co-PI);
• Ian Dobson, professor and Sandbulte Professor of Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering (Co-PI);
• William Gallus; professor, Earth, Atmosphere, and Climate (Co-PI);
• Samuel Mindes, adjunct assistant professor, Rural Sociology and Extension and Outreach (Co-PI); and
• Anne Kimber; Director of Electric Power Energy Center (Senior-personnel).

Each core member of the team offers critical expertise that will be leveraged in key areas of focus within the project:
• Alipour – assessment of the vulnerability of electric power network components to extreme weather events;
• Shafei – adaptation and possible asset-hardening strategies;
• Dobson – statistical analysis of grid data to assess resilience;
• Gallus – climate risk modeling and projections; and
• Mindes – community outreach and customer perspective integration.
• Kimber– grid-level adaptation and utility engagement

The new ReDDDoT project builds on a previous NSF-sponsored project completed by the research team at Iowa State. That project – CIVIC-PG Track A: Electric Network Disaster Mitigation for Utilities Serving Rural Communities (ENDURE) – served as the blueprint for identifying resources to establish a digital infrastructure for underfunded rural utilities. The ReDDDoT research effort will also be augmented by the project that received seed funding support from the Office of the President through the Community Vitality Research and Innovation Roundtable (RIR) hosted by the Office of the Vice President for Research this past spring semester. All RIR projects are viewed as investments in the future of Iowa State University as outlined in the 2022-2031 Strategic Plan.

“The Iowa State Research community is committed to working collaboratively to tackle real-world challenges that impact our society,” said Vice President for Research, Peter Dorhout. “That commitment is reflected in Doctors Alipour, Shafei, Dobson, Gallus, Mindes, and Kimber coming together to work on aligned seed- and NSF-funded projects that are focused on improving the resiliency of our rural electric utilities. We’re delighted for the success of this team, and we’re confident other projects that have received RIR seed funding will soon experience their own success in attracting significant external agency funding support.”